Was it Over When the Germans Bombed Peal Harbor? aka the Rays are still in this thing!

Since we live in the age of the negative let us start with the bad news. The Rays aren’t going to repeat as American League East Champions. With just under forty games to go they aren’t in a position to make up the 10 games that separate the two teams in the standings. Luckily for the Rays they live in the age of the wild card.

That leads to the good news. Despite the impression you might get from listening to local radio, the Rays are still in the middle of the post season hunt. They took two out of three from the Rangers this weekend and closed the gap to two games behind the surprising ball club from Arlington. Both teams are still chasing Boston for the outright lead.

The Rays have a leg up in that chase as they have 6 games head to head with Boston while Texas has finished their season series with the Red Sox. Making up games is always easiest when you’re playing the team head to head. With the success that the Rays have had against Boston over the last two years it isn’t inconceivable that a 3-4 game lead can be erased within a week.

All season long fans and radio hosts have bashed the Rays to the point where one would assume the team was on pace for another 100 loss season. Why all of the hate? Well one thing you must understand about the TBA (that’s Tampa Bay Area for you new readers) is that if the team isn’t first it might as well be last.

The flip side is if the team is in last (which happens quite a bit around these parts) all the fans want is for the team to be competitive. Of course, by competitive they mean in first place. Have the Rays struggled at times this year? Definitely. Does that mean we should spew venom over the air waves and question their integrity on a day to day basis? Definitely not.

Fans let me tell you - it’s not embarrassing to cheer for a team that doesn’t end up in first place. After all, only one team gets to hoist the trophy at the end of the year. Cheer for them when they win and cheer for them when they lose. Ninety nine percent of your life is going to be spent supporting a team that doesn’t win it all.

Besides, where’s the fun in cheering only when they win? That’s like putting together a 15 piece puzzle. Sure you get the pride in putting it together, but where’s the challenge? It’s not like the Rays are a losing team this year. They are on pace to win 88 games. For those of you who have been here longer than a season and a half wouldn’t that have sounded grand in 2007 (66 wins), 2006 (61 wins) or 2005 (67 wins).

The Rays have stayed in the chase despite sub par seasons from their top two pitchers, Scott Kazmir and James Shields, and rough years from BJ Upton and Dioner Navarro. Luckily those struggles have been off-set by career years from Jason Bartlett and Jeff Niemann, not to mention the reemergence of Carl Crawford.

What happens if Kazmir continues his recent success and Shields starts getting some run support? The Rays start putting together 5 and 6 game winning streaks, that’s what happens. It’s better for your team to be hot in September than in April. Remember all of the complaining about resting starters in April and May - well this is why Maddon did it. So that his team is the freshest when the games mean the most.

The Yankees are clear and gone, but the Red Sox are still vulnerable. A strong finish and the Rays can nip the Sox at the wire. So let us turn those frowns upside down. Let us hear some Joe Maddon-ish optimism out there. I’m hoping the black hair dye catches on like the Ray-Hawk, I would find it amusing if the Trop was packed with 60 year olds looking like Death Cab-listening emo’s.

So when I tune in the radio tomorrow I want to hear some positive thoughts out there. Don’t back down to the radio tough guys and their negativity, because to paraphrase Jackie DeShannon, what the world needs now is positivity sweet positivity. It truly is the one thing that there’s just too little of.

A Nation Defeated or....how a bunch of Mohawk wearing, cowbell clanging kids crashed the World Series

I’m not going to lie. I wrote off the Rays before game 7. In fact, I spent most of the afternoon penning a eulogy that will never see the light of day. I wasn’t mad or upset, just resigned to the fact that the Rays would lose and I would never be able to go to another baseball related comment board. If the annoying portion (any unfortunately the most vocal portion) of Red Sox fans had been insufferable before coming back from 3-1, 7-0 then they would be twice so after.

Luckily the Rays did what they’ve done best this year, prove everyone wrong. They ended up outplaying the seasoned veterans in game 7 and emerged victorious. Even after the early home run by Dustin Pedoria I still felt good about the game. For some reason you knew someone was going to come up big and that person was Matt Garza. The big right hander was extremely effective in holding the Sox to two hits over 7 plus innings. The win continued a theme that took place throughout the season. Three times this season they were counted out by the experts:

1. The 7 game losing streak before the All Star Break
2. The September series in Boston when the Rays were ahead by mere percentage points with two more games looming in Fenway Park.
3. Game 7

Whether they are two young, too stupid or too relaxed to care the 2008 Rays have a tendency to shine when the pressure is on the most. I’m pretty sure it starts with the man on top - Joe Maddon. Merlot Joe (as he has been crowned by other better written blogs) has managed this club with the perfect combination of discipline (yanking BJ Upton off the field) and chaos (Mohawks, beards, Jon Gomes). If Lou Pinella is still managing this club it’s still a 70 win club and there’s a good chance he’s destroyed the psyche of players like Matt Garza and Upton.

Maddon is going to be manager of the year, without a doubt. In the same token Andrew Freedman is the executive of the year. Is it fitting the two of the big three stars in game 7 weren’t with the club last year. Freedman took a chance on trading away future phenom Delmon Young and Brandon Harris for a shortstop with defensive problems (Jason Bartlett) and a former 1st round pick that had prodigious talent, but also had the cloud of emotional baggage hanging over his young career. In a slightly less heralded deal he shipped left hander Jeff Ridgeway to Atlanta for third baseman Willy Aybar a young switch hitting infielder who was coming off an injury and some legal issues. All he did in game 7 was hit a booming home run that gave the Rays a bit of breathing room.

Off the field moves like that built the future success of this year’s club. Once they won their 82nd game the season was a success. A record of .500 was all the fans and management had asked for. Yet bettering that goal and holding off the Red Sox to claim the division title suddenly wasn’t good enough. Radio hosts were saying that the season would be a disappointment if they lost in the first round.. Suddenly their unprecedented success has raised the expectations that were dangerously unreachable.

Dispatching the White Sox with relative ease and winning the first 3 of 4 against the Red Sox bumped the expectations up even more. Losing to the Red Sox wasn’t about losing to a better or worse team. It was about losing to their fans. Fans in the TBA (both new and old) have a serious identity problem. Years of less than mediocre teams and a giant influx of transplants consistently made the Trop a home away from home for powerhouses like the Red Sox and Yankees. It wasn’t until this year that the tide stated to turn and it seemed that losing to the Sox in the playoffs would have crushed the small gains made.

It’s fun to be able to laugh off the scorn and bitterness from other teams fans now. For today, and maybe just for today, the little brother won the fight against the older brother. The jabs about the Trop and it’s catwalks don’t sting as much. After all, take away the green monster in Fenway and what do you have? A 96 year old stadium with cramped seating, obstructed views and crappy plumbing. If the Rays are still playing in the Trop in 2080 I’m sure it will be regarded in the same light as Fenway is today.

The bitter residents of the pseudo-nation can whine about how cheesy the cowbells are, well so what? The clanging cowbells are still making noise while the saccharine lyrics of “Sweet Caroline” are silent. The bells are something unique in sports (well accept for downhill skiing I guess) and that’s something that’s missing in today’s sports world. A world where everyone has Thunder Stix or does the wave and is implored by the same tired onscreen graphics to cheer. They also give the stadium a unique noise. I have been going to sporting events for the better part of my 32 years on this planet and there are few arenas that I have been in that were louder than the Trop during Game 1 of the ALCS.

Of course when I sit in my seat on Wednesday, high up in the Beach I could experience a new high. I might not be banging a cowbell, but I’ll definitely be cheering as loud as I can for the team that wouldn’t go away.

One Game Away

As you can see I haven’t written much this month. Mainly because I didn’t want to jinx the Rays, but also because I’m quite lazy. Throw in some traveling, some tough days at the office and you end up going two months without posting to your own site. Sorry about that faithful readers. As the cold weather approaches expect more postings.

So with that out of the way lets get to the Rays. To steal a phrase from post game guru Rich Herrera it has indeed been a magical summer. As the months wore on the experts kept anticipating a fall. Sure they were good in May, but wait till the summer starts and they wilt in June. They made it through June, you say? Well surely they’ll fade by the All-Star Break. Seven game losing streak at the break - see I told you they couldn’t hold up - they’ll be done in August. Still in first? Well as we all know September is the months that dashes the hopes and dream of the pretenders.

Does that sound familiar? It certainly does to me. Even hulking Red Sox slugger David Ortiz had to recant his words. In July he told the media, “I’m not saying that they will drop, but if you go by the numbers, that’s normally what happens in baseball. It’s always the guys with more experience and the guys used to being in the same spot at the end of the year that take over” In September he had to admit that they were for real.

Now, Mr. Papi, the number that is most important is one. As in the Rays magic number to clinch the division. Proving people wrong has gotten old for this team. When Scott Kazmir uttered his infamous “What’s possible? Play in October, that’s possible” on February 16th fans of the Rays were treated to the following responses from the commenters on Deadspin:

The only way the rays are gonna play in October is if Selig decides to move the season back a few months to have a few more steroid hearings (DemecoShallInerittheEarth)

There's a better chance for the Kashmir dispute to be settled by October than for Kazmir to be right. (DumpDolan)

The negativity on the various other commenter boards is too inane to repeat here. Throughout the season, even on the local hometown paper’s website supposed fans, whined and moaned about the team. David Price wasn’t called up fast enough, they didn’t make any deals, BJ Upton never smiles so they should trade him, etc, etc.

Even though they kept winning the fans kept complaining online and on the radio? Why wasn’t anyone enjoying this - sure the 15-20,000 fans had fun at the fame, but as soon as it was over the whining continued. Let Kazmir pitch more, take Troy Percival behind the shed and shoot him, for God’s sake why won’t Maddon call a bunt!

On the other side of the spectrum was the team itself. They elevated fun to a new level for a ball club A stark contract to the business-like Yankees dynasty of the late 90’s. After all it’s hard to picture Paul O’Neil bouncing around in the dugout with a Mohawk after another late inning win. They seemed to be a throwback to the old clubs that grandfathers like to talk about, the Gashouse Gang, The A’s of the 70’s and the Bronx Zoo Yankees.

Watching the team throughout the season has led me to realize a few things.

1. Pitching and defense wins games. It’s a cliché, but a valid one. A strengthened bullpen with Dan Wheeler and the resurgent Grant Balfour as well as adding Matt Garza to the rotation allowed the team to vault past the other mediocre teams in the division. The defensive play, led up the middle by Jason Bartlett, Aki! And BJ Upton prevented them from giving extra outs to the Red Sox and Yankees helping to prevent big innings.

Building a team through pitching and defense is also cheaper than building a team around offense. Chicks might dig the long ball, but cost conscious owners don’t dig signing those checks. See the failed Hit Show experiment as to why offense isn’t always the way to go.

2. Chemistry does matter. As I touched on briefly this earlier, but the team does really enjoy playing together. Whether it’s the Mohawks, or boxing robes for Jon Gomes or the scraggily beards in support of Rocco this team is here for more than a paycheck. California Joe is the perfect leader for this group of kids. He let’s them run amok just enough to find out what their limits are, but also knows when to put a firm foot down.

3. There is a definite ace on the team and his name isn’t Scott Kazmir. I like Kazmir, I think he has tremendous ability, but he hasn’t harnessed it yet. Until he can work out of the 5th inning he can’t be the leader of the staff. Matt Garza has the most electric stuff on the staff, but inconsistency is his cross to bear. He could throw a no hitter or not last through the first. Andy Sonnanstine led the teams with wins for most of the season and was invaluable in eating up innings through out the season, but he’s…well…he’s Andy Sonnanstine - Mike Boddicker version 2.0. Ed Jackson is much like Garza and Kazmir - a raw talent who hasn’t learned the art of pitching yet.

That leaves one person. Big Game James. Going into the playoffs he is the undisputed ace of the staff. The game that sealed the deal - game one of the double header against Baltimore. On a day when they needed a pitcher to give them some innings he went out and gave them seven strong. Thirty-two starts and 214 innings averages out to almost 7 innings a start. Compare that to 27 starts and 152 innings for Kazmir. That’s a full inning less that Shields. Going into the playoffs the Rays are going to need to keep the bullpen fresh. If Shields can give them 2-3 starts of 7 innings or more then it saves the bullpen for games when they’re needed (I.E. Kazmir’s starts).

In the next few days the Rays will clinch their first division title. They will celebrate, there will be swimming goggles and champagne. Then the critics will come out and poke little holes in the team and come up with reasons why they won’t advance. Let’s leave that for later. For now enjoy what has transgressed from April to September. From Kazmir’s seemingly ridicules playoff prediction in spring training to the proliferation of 9=8 t-shirts. From 0-14 in the minors to presumptive Rookie of the Year for Evan Longoria. From Class A to the show for David Price. It’s been a wild ride.